


A Little Sincerity

by Zai42



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Touching, First Meetings, M/M, Romance, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:09:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25029796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42
Summary: Goblins, for the most part, have smaller daemons. Grizzop is, in this as in most things, an exception.
Relationships: Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	A Little Sincerity

Goblins, for the most part, had small daemons. Every now and then one would have something like a fox or a vulture - large in comparison to their small stature, but still reasonably small.

The goblin accompanying Hamid and Sasha is astride a grey-furred wolf. She is enormous and intimidating and stunningly beautiful.

From her place on Oscar’s shoulder, Kalliope flutters her wings, and murmurs in her small voice, “Oh, I _adore_ them.”

* * *

Kalliope is small and nonthreatening. No one is frightened of a butterfly daemon, but they should be, because no one can read a butterfly daemon, either. She sits delicately upon his lapel, black and metallic green, and has no expressive eyes to broadcast their thoughts, no nervous tics that register as emotional to an outside observer - the slow flex of her wings, the dainty shifting of one spindly leg.

Whenever Grizzop and Drika are nearby, Kalliope cannot sit still. She flutters in erratic patterns, alights on Grizzop’s bow, Drika’s ears and once her nose, when she was feeling daring. She opens her wings to catch the light, to make her green scales flash and glimmer. It’s shameless.

* * *

No one but Oscar has ever laid a finger on Kalliope.

They used to dream of it, when they were younger - of meeting their true love, of feeling their touch against Kalliope’s fur or feathers, whichever she settled with. What would it be like, Oscar wondered, to feel his beloved’s hand pressed up against his very soul? To feel their warmth in the most sacred part of him? To trust and love another being so deeply as to let them lay their hands on his heart?

After Kalliope settled, after they began working for the meritocrats, after they stitched themselves a reputation and a mask all in one, the fantasies faded. 

* * *

When Grizzop finds them half-dead in their office, he scoops Kalliope into his palms from the floor, his touch gentle, and apologizes for it afterwards.

“I wouldn’t have,” he says, glancing aside. “It’s just you’re so small, Drika might’ve squished you.”

“No harm done,” Kalliope says. Drika’s tail wags.

* * *

They die.

For eighteen months they are dead, and for seven days after that they are still dead but there is something that looks like them simmering in quarantine. They’re so angry. At the waste of time. At having to sit in a cell and do nothing. Oscar tells himself it is a lie, but hope is stubborn and it chokes his heart like a weed.

When Grizzop is free and clear, he and Drika storm into Oscar’s office, and Grizzop seizes Oscar’s lapels and yanks him into a kiss that is as much an admonishment as it is an admission.

For a moment, Kalliope flutters around Drika’s head as if it is eighteen months ago and she still has it in her to flirt.

* * *

Drika, standing on her hind legs, is not that much shorter than Oscar. This isn’t a fact Oscar had considered in any great depth until now, pinned, panting, beneath her bulk. He can’t speak, can’t move; somewhere above him Kalliope is flitting erratically around the room. Drika is growling subaudibly, not a threat but a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates along Oscar’s chest. His nerves are alight with sensation.

Drika leans in and licks his cheek, and Oscar whines like a lost pup, tilting his head back, exposing his neck to her teeth and thinking nothing of it.

This isn’t what he imagined touching another person’s daemon might feel like. It is overwhelming, his mind scrabbling for purchase at something, anything, and finding nothing, tumbling into an abyss from which there is no clawing his way back. He can’t find it in him to mind. “You can touch,” Drika says, her voice slow and baritone. She lowers her head to rest against his chest and tilts to stare at him with harvest-moon eyes.

Oscar hesitates for a moment; lifts a hand; hears Grizzop laugh dizzily over Drika’s shoulder. His own small hand sinks into the fur at Drika’s scruff and he leans into Oscar’s line of sight. “All right, Wilde?” he says; he takes Oscar’s hand, kisses each finger, and lowers it gently into his daemon’s fur.

Oscar whines again, flexing his fingers; Drika’s fur is thick and coarse beneath his palm, and he is dizzy with the knowledge that this is Grizzop’s soul, laid bare against him. He brings up his free hand and cradles Drika’s massive skull between his palms, presses a kiss to the cold tip of her nose. “My darling,” he murmurs.

Above him, he hears Grizzop gasp, and Oscar doesn’t have to look because he can feel it, in every loose muscle and sparking nerve ending - but he wants to look, wants to see Kalliope, his dearest, settling on Grizzop’s shoulder, wings flexing to catch the low lamplight. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kalliope is an apple-green swallowtail; Drika is a grey wolf.


End file.
